Why Colorado isn't ready to make the leap to legalized marijuana

Nov. 3, 2012

By most measures, the “war on drugs,” as it’s currently being waged, isn’t working. It’s never been easier for teens to access marijuana, and while use of alcohol and tobacco (both regulated substances) have dropped over the past six years, marijuana use (the drug we’re warring against) has remained close to flat.

In a CDC study between 2005 and 2011, alcohol-related issues largely saw double-digit percentage drops in Colorado. The number of teens who said they had a drink in the previous 30 days went from 46 percent to 36 percent.

Marijuana use, though, remained fairly consistent. Teens who responded they’d used marijuana in the previous 30 days held largely flat, from 22.7 percent in 2005 to 22 percent in 2011.

As a society — parents, educators and law enforcers — we should collectively feel ashamed that we’ve spent so much time and resources in favor of a system that isn’t working. If we had been fighting a costly traditional war for years while losing ground, we’d try different tactics, yet we’ve kept our approaches largely the same during the decades-long war on drugs. Using that logic, the Amendment 64 campaign to regulate marijuana carries some persuasive credit and impressive statistics.

But Colorado just isn’t ready to make that leap.

Even with medicinal marijuana laws in place in Colorado for years, the Legislature has been slow to agree on standards for impaired driving.

Cases like this make us concerned that, once the floodgates have been opened to broad public consumption, our legal and regulatory system won’t be able to catch up, leaving a years-long gray area that would quickly become a nightmare for law enforcement and lawyers.

We’re also concerned that the nation’s laws aren’t ready. The vast majority of banks can’t touch money coming from the marijuana trade — legal or not — making it a cash-only industry, further driving a wedge of implied seediness between it and other businesses.

Amendment 64 seems like a cart careening down a hill with the horse struggling to keep up. Without adequate federal banking reforms to allow state-level marijuana businesses to operate, and without a track record of faster action from the Legislature, passage of this amendment seems premature.

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There may come a day when marijuana possession is legal in Colorado. We don’t fear that day, and we’re open to the notion that regulation and taxation of the substance could possibly change the direction of the failing war on drugs.

But the framework isn’t in place for legal marijuana use in Colorado at this time.

Question 301

While federal and state governments can be useful in setting baselines, we’re convinced that communities know best how they want to define themselves.

In many ways, it’s the story of the West.

Fort Collins residents who head to the polls on Tuesday will have a chance to weigh in on whether medical marijuana dispensaries can reopen their doors in Fort Collins.

We hope voters elect to keep the ban in place.

We’re not making this recommendation out of fear, but rather as a statement on our quality of life. Citizen groups in Fort Collins suggest that there’s a large tie to marijuana dispensaries and teen exposure to the drug. If that were the case, arrests would have gone up while dispensaries were in town, but they stayed largely level. The same can be said for teen marijuana use between 2006 and 2011, but that only fluctuated by 1 percentage point. Data points to little correlation between these two things.

Fort Collins has many amazing things going for it; the community doesn’t need the MMJ dispensaries or the tax revenue they bring in.

Last year, the vote to bump dispensaries out of Fort Collins was a close one — the margin between yes and no was only 4 percent. As contentious as the race was, we’re happy with the decision voters made, and hope they continue the groundwork set in place by last year’s vote.